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Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

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Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#221

Post by Aerroon »

chriselles wrote: post #220

Well, it will be 3 years next month since the first open source kinetic attack by non state actors using commercial off the self drones was conducted. Frankly, I’m surprised it has taken 3 years for them to be used for kinetic attack by exceptionally well funded narcos. Illicit use of drones has happened and will continue to grow.

I'm surprised that it has taken this long for all of it. I remember reading the news several years ago about how some small drones got close to Merkel. My first worry was about assassinations. Quadcopters aren't expensive or even very difficult to make.

How do you even stop something like that?

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#222

Post by manigandham »

loceng wrote: post #24
sixothree wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a hundred thousand of these things. Ugh. I don’t wanna know if that’s in our future.

Elon's talked about this on stage, where easily could have 1,000 to 100,000 of them with just a tiny amount of C4 - and then have them swarm at one or many targets using AI or other training/data.

Using overwhelming numbers of small and expendable weapons is a tried and true strategy.

Drone swarms are coming once the technology gets mature enough, mostly in speed and carrying capacity.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#224

Post by [deleted] »

kumarvvr wrote: post #137

The next worst case scenario is autonomous drones, that do not require radio or gps inputs. Navigation can be done with crude inertial navigation systems and advancing AI can identify and fly to targets with increasing accuracy. Causing general chaos or exploding in crowds will not require AI though. The only counter measure against those will then be an EMP system, Blinding lights to disable cameras, etc. The next e…

[deleted]

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#225

Post by dmos62 »

JackFr wrote: post #123

As I read the article, there was not actually a single confirmed death by explosive armed drone. I suspect that ultimately it’s likely impractical To kill people by drone as compared, on a cost basis, to other more pedestrian means of killing people. Drones may be cheap, but drones that can lift more than 2 kilos aren’t. The logistics of getting a drone near enough to the intended target to kill them are going to be…

I don't know. How many attacks happen that have a budget in the thousands of dollars (that's what I ballpark the price of a load bearing drone to be)? I presume a lot. Another way to look at it is, how much does personal protection cost? Bodyguards, etc. If your attack methods are cheaper and at least comparably effective, they're good.

Considering IED drone effectiveness, I think it's just a question of developing tactics and maybe custom tech. It doesn't sound complicated to have a drone descend vertically at such high speeds that even if you notice it and disable its motors it's too late; fuse set to airburst. Exciting time to be a narco weapons engineer.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#227

Post by adrianN »

denisastoyanov wrote: post #201
sudosysgen wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but kinetic countermeasures scale really badly. The definition of "drone" is also quite flexible here, a couple guys with shotguns, falcons, or your own anti-drones work fine against a few slow drones, badly against a few dozen slow flying drones, not at all against a few hundred slow flying drones, are essentially useless against one jet-powered drone (microjet engines are very cheap!) don't have a hope against…

Umm people speak about lasers, energy based weapons and etc and etc. That problem was solved almost century ago. Flak cannons. The moment you have means to properly detect such cloud of problems, few flak cannons will rip them apart in seconds.

Low flying targets are hard to hit with flak I think. It's also hard to fire flak over the heads of a crowd at a public speaking event without hurting anybody.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#228

Post by implements »

dron3r wrote: post #133
Yc4win wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has there been any progress with coming up with a system that can _reliably_ jam them?

You can jam signals they rely on, like GPS and cellular, but there are already drones that are capable of flying on vision alone, so no.

Well, if you managed to detect and track an incoming drone you could ‘jam’ its camera with a high-powered laser - or something that threw up a curtain of flares or burning magnesium, or whatever.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#229

Post by vertis »

Aerroon wrote: post #221
chriselles wrote: post #220

Well, it will be 3 years next month since the first open source kinetic attack by non state actors using commercial off the self drones was conducted. Frankly, I’m surprised it has taken 3 years for them to be used for kinetic attack by exceptionally well funded narcos. Illicit use of drones has happened and will continue to grow.

I'm surprised that it has taken this long for all of it. I remember reading the news several years ago about how some small drones got close to Merkel. My first worry was about assassinations. Quadcopters aren't expensive or even very difficult to make. How do you even stop something like that?

Without being an expert...

Shotguns, firing a net, anti-drone drones and also interfering with signals are all on the table.

Re: Drug cartel assassinates its enemies with bomb-toting drones

#230

Post by nostrademons »

Pfhreak wrote: post #132
stjohnswarts wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or they get into the "protection" and kidnapping racket even more than they are currently. Sure their size would probably decrease but the amount of violence would skyrocket. At least for several years. The basically control whole swathes of that. They wouldn't give that up without a fight.

Is that what happened at the end of prohibition? (Genuine question, I'm not well informed in this area.)

Hard to disentangle effects from other stuff that was going on. Prohibition was repealed in 1933, in the depths of the Depression. It was also the year before FDR signed a comprehensive crime-fighting bill that allowed FBI agents to carry guns and make arrests.

By pure numbers, crime did hit a 20th-century high in 1933, right after prohibition was repealed, and they didn't pass those numbers until the 1970s-early 1990s (and only just barely then). But this was also the economic nadir of the century. And the mechanism for the decline in organized crime was that many crime bosses were killed or imprisoned, so it could've been the crime bill. So yes, it is what happened at the end of prohibition, but it's hard to draw firm conclusions between the two.

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